American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages

Review
Reviewed Work(s): The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova: Living in Different Mirrors by
Alexandra Hamilton
Review by: Sonia I. Ketchian
Source: The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 52, No. 1 (Spring, 2008), pp. 130-132
Published by: American Association of Teachers of Slavic and East European Languages
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20459626
Accessed: 16-01-2020 01:59 UTC

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 130 Slavic and East European Journal

ical, sociological) discourses offered new models for understanding self-killing, as well as how
they prescribed new prophylactic measures against it. The old religious discourse and these new
models, Morrissey argues, both competed with each other in the period 1861-1917 and shared
common perspectives, e.g., a view of life in the modem metropolis as deleterious to the health
of the Russian population.
Finally, Part Three examines the political meanings of suicide in the era between the eman
cipation of the serfs and 1917, with special attention devoted to the revolutionary years of
1905-1907. Morrissey demonstrates that the state, as well as members of the emerging revolu
tionary movement, borrowed in equal measure from both science and religion in their treatment
of suicide. The state, for example, used statistics on suicide for an assessment of the problem
and pursued moral-religious education as a measure for curtailing the number of suicides. The
revolutionaries, on the other hand, argued in the language of sociology that suicide among the
urban poor stems from poor living conditions and, at the same time, portrayed suicides of rev
olutionaries in prison or even schoolchildren in repressive, state-run schools, in quasi-religious
terms of martyrdom.
Suicide and the Body Politic in Imperial Russia concludes with a suggestive and thought-pro
voking epilogue, in which the author argues that suicide became "an iconic act in late imperial
Russia" (346): in interpreting it, she claims, different groups and powers within Russian soci
ety confronted the condition of modernity itself. An over-arching argument thus appears to
wards the end of the study, as Morrissey inscribes the history of suicide in Imperial Russia
within the larger context of transition from a traditional society to a modern one. The emergence
of this narrative violates to some extent Morrissey's own stated intention of avoiding "grand
narratives" (7), but the presence of such a narrative does not actually detract in any way from
the excellence of this study. If anything, at the end of Suicide and the Body Politic one is left
wishing that Morrissey would have developed at more length her ideas on suicide as emblem
atic of Russia's modernity, since Part Three and the Epilogue are arguably the most intriguing
and original segments of the work.
Suicide and the Body Politic represents a valuable contribution both to the historiography of
Imperial Russia in general and to our understanding of its culture in particular. It should prove
to be of interest to both historians and to students of Russia's literature and culture.

Dunja Popovic, Harvard University

Alexandra Hamilton. The Poetry ofAnna Akhmatova: Living in Different Mirrors. London: An
them Press, 2006. Bibliography. Index. 275 pp. $85.00 (cloth).

This book's introduction-a concise critical biography that situates Akhmatova's life and works
in context-precedes five substantive chapters, of which the first centers on the early period,
where the poetry advances from epistemology to ontology. Alexandra Hamilton's objective is to
trace the internal logic behind one poetic system converting to another where Akhmatova's evo
lution advances beyond the early fusion of Realism and Modernism and moves toward Postmod
ernism. An excellent synopsis of Symbolism and Acmeism facilitates the reader's comprehen
sion of the author's sophisticated thought processes. In Akhmatova's poetry, Hamilton argues, the
complex and elusive multifaceted self reveals a fluid, modernist, fragmented, and chameleon-like
identity. This capacity for disassociation transforms in the later period to a sense of different
selves. Akhmatova's multiplied and juxtaposed perspectives, interior monologue, dislocated
chronology, and indirectly presented or withheld information lead Hamilton to uncover the prob
lems in constructing a coherent story, for such difficulties serve as evidence of an epistemologi
cal dominant. Moreover, the external world in the early lyrics remains stable, recognizable in the

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 Reviews 131

Acmeist commitment to "this world" (78). Hamilton discusses poems displaying metempsy
chosis and reincarnation as the "crossing of ontological boundaries" and as different modes of
reality (86). The study examines Akhmatova's myth of death and rebirth as it applies to the si
lencing of her poetry in her own biography. Having consulted numerous texts to the study's ben
efit, Hamilton couches disagreements with scholars in nearly imperceptible terms.
In chapter two the author's novel focus on epistemology and ontology for deeper insight into
Akhmatova's works uncovers interesting vistas on Requiem, where an epistemological theme of
the amorphousness of time reflects the speaker's confused, suffering mental state. Hamilton fol
lows Michael Basker in foregrounding the discontinuity between their perceived different
speakers in Requiem. The speaker is thus giving voice to the various women in the prison lines,
for "[t]he intrusion of these other voices adds credence to Akhmatova's claim that the text is
woven out of their 'poor, overheard words,' but renders the lyric 'I' highly inconsistent and dis
persed" (111). Above all, the author finds the dominant in Requiem to be epistemology in "a
state of tension with ontology" (as in different selves), "owing to the constant pull from outside
and within the text" (111).
Chapter three examines in the "Northern Elegies" "[t]he idea of having lived more than once
or of having existed in different dimensions of being" as of crucial importance amidst the un
conventional mourning of the speaker's own life (114). Ontology explains the coexistence of
two worlds in "In that house ...," with the mirror foregrounding the boundary between the two
worlds. Quoting Vladimir Toporov and 1. Kravtsova, who connected the notion of alternative
existences and the memory of what did not happen with intertextuality and the poetry of T. S.
Eliot, Hamilton observes that both poets "create ontological disturbance remembering what did
not happen," although Akhmatova predates Eliot "and carries it further" (135). The author's ex
amination of the Petersburg myth would have benefited from Anna Lisa Crone and Jennifer Jean
Day's My Petersburg/Myself: Mental Architecture and Imaginative Space in Modern Russian
Letters (Slavica, 2004). Suggesting a postmodernist reading of the elegy "Prehistory," the au
thor holds that in "Northern Elegies" Akhmatova moves toward a postmodernist sensibility.
Chapter four addresses the complex notions of non-meetings, the burnt notebooks, and see
ing the world through a looking glass in the late cycles. The East and West as world modes not
permitted to be in contact find grounds for communication for the speaker in a poetic world that
is independent of the laws of time and space. In "First Song" Hamilton affirms that the "series
of negatives" combines to "suggest an image of their opposite" and "the level of detail given to
the negated situation makes it seem somehow tangible" (162). Indeed, in the cycle "The Sweet
briar Blooms" Akhmatova converts non-being into an ontological issue "by projecting an alter
native, negated world; a non-world of non-being, non-conversations, non-meetings, and non
life, which is given positive features" (166). Mirrors serve as metaphors for the production of
different selves and different constructions of reality-as different worlds (185). Hamilton
clearly shows that music is used to express a hidden dimension of reality, close to Symbolism.
Chapter five examines Akhmatova's most postmodernist work, her Poem Without a Hero,
which addresses the "connections and contrasts between different eras, textual worlds and ver
sions of the self' that underscore the poem's ontological dominant (199). The commendable ex
planation of Part One, "The Year Nineteen Thirteen: A Petersburg Tale," where Hamilton reads
the dream against the real time of Akhmatova's conception and writing of the work (1940),
counterbalances the different worlds in the poem with the author's multiple selves. Through the
paratextual elements of the introduction, footnotes, and prose Akhmatova "complicates the task
of determining where the boundaries of the text lie, where the real author begins, and the fic
tional 'author' ends" (233). Hamilton explains through Akhmatova's own words ("I write on
your rough draft") the profusion of intertextuality and the numerous versions, as well as the un
finished quality of the masterpiece that mirrors the "unfinishedness" of Postmodernism.
Nonetheless, the author carefully reminds the readers that Akhmatova is not a "postmodernist
without reservation," in spite of Poem Without a Hero moving closest to it, for the poet did not

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 132 Slavic and East European Journal

intend to pattern her work exclusively on the basis of ontological and epistemological aspects.
Indeed, other scholarly approaches and discourses of the past and future will continue to add
clarity and dimension to the understanding of this magnificent poetry. Alexandra Hamilton
writes a worthy study in a beautifully pellucid idiom that will benefit scholars, students, theory
and Akhmatova enthusiasts alike.

Sonia L Ketchian, Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, Harvard University

Robert Bird. The Russian Prospero: The Creative World of Viacheslav Ivanov. Madison: U of
Wisconsin P, 2006. Bibliography. Index. xiii + 310 pp. $50.00 (cloth).

Viacheslav Ivanov is the least approachable of the major Russian Symbolists: Robert Bird calls
him "widely known yet little understood, universally respected yet hardly loved" (3). The
daunting lexical and syntactical complexities of his early verse in particular combine with a vast
wealth of mythological and literary references and are informed by a highly personal cosmol
ogy explained in detail only in Ivanov's theoretical writing. His later poetry, though stylistically
simpler, still retains a certain hermeticism and high seriousness. Ivanov's versification, though
masterful, is relatively conservative, so that the reader's attention is directed firmly back to
questions of content rather than form. Yet at his best, Ivanov is not only challenging, but also
moving and inspiring. Bird's new book, the most comprehensive overall treatment of Ivanov's
work to date, is an extremely welcome guide to his poetry and thought which will both make
Ivanov a good deal more accessible to many more people than has been the case until now and
provide a solid point of reference for further scholarly work.
The title of Bird's book, The Russian Prospero, encapsulates what he sees as the central par
adox of Ivanov's work: "the uneasy dichotomy between Ivanov's lyric inspiration and his at
tempt to harness this lyric power in the service of his ideas" (3). Like Prospero, a frequent fig
ure in Ivanov's writing, the poet must renounce the ritual magic of his lyric verse in order to
ensure his continuing influence in human society. In Bird's view this is something that Ivanov
achieved in the verse of his last period, notably in the Rimskii dnevnik 1944 g.
Against the background of this dominant trope Bird skillfully combines a chronological and
a thematic approach to Ivanov's verse and theoretical writing. He begins with a useful analysis
of Ivanov's biography in terms of the mythological burden which the poet systematically placed
on it, in particular the inscription of sacrifice and loss. Ivanov's constant physical displace
ment-from Moscow to Germany to St. Petersburg to Baku to Rome-bespeaks a permanent
separation from the idea of home. His complex mystical-erotic relationship with his second wife
Lidia Dmitrievna and subsequently with Vera Shvarshalon, Lidia's daughter from her first mar
riage, projects this sense of loss into the arena of love. Complex issues of belief and faith attend
Ivanov's attitude to established religion, the "political romanticism" of his co-operation with the
early Soviet state, and his eventual conversion to Catholicism. This background is essential to
an understanding of the way in which multiple layers of myth-historical, ritual, erotic, literary
and biographical, in Bird's categorization-are intertwined in the intricate weave of Ivanov's
early verse.
Bird's discussion of Ivanov's poetry focuses on the distinction he makes between the lyric
and epic modes. Tracing the origins of Ivanov's theory of discourse in Schiller, Goethe, and Be
linsky as well as Nietzsche, Bird emphasizes the connection between lyric, tragedy, ritual and
symbol on the one hand, and epic, myth, aetiology and allegory on the other. As he shows
through detailed readings of individual texts, if Ivanov's lyrics seek a performative re-enact
ment by the reader of an original transcendent experience, then his longer poems aim at a
hermeneutic explanation of this experience through reflection and memory.

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